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The lord of Obama’s ring

Joseph Farah is founder, editor and chief executive officer of WND. He is the author or co-author of 13 books that have sold more than 5 million copies, including his latest, "The Restitution of All Things: Israel, Christians, and the End of the Age." Before launching WND as the first independent online news outlet in 1997, he served as editor in chief of major market dailies including the legendary Sacramento Union.

Let’s face it. What we don’t know about Barack Obama could fill volumes.

Yet, here he is after spending four years in the White House and facing re-election – still an enigma.

It’s not just Obama’s tendency toward secrecy and control of information that is at fault. It’s also a deep, deep institutional problem within the media – both the big corporate press and the so-called alternative press. There are certain stories they just won’t cover. There are certain avenues they will just not explore. There are certain subjects just too sensitive to pursue.

This week, we found another one that strikes right at the core of Obama’s very identity – and the many contradictory stories he has told about his life.

It’s a ring he wears on the finger generally reserved for wedding bands. It looks like a wedding band. But he has worn it at least since his days at Occidental College, through his years at Columbia and Harvard, where it became something of a joke and puzzlement among his classmates. It’s the same ring Michelle Robinson put on his finger at the couple’s wedding ceremony in 1992. He continues to wear it today.

The Shahada is the first of the Five Pillars of Islam, expressing the two fundamental beliefs that make a person a Muslim: There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is Allah’s prophet.

Sincere recitation of the Shahada is the sole requirement for becoming a Muslim, as it expresses a person’s rejection of all other gods.

Would you consider this to be a rather explosive story weeks before the presidential election?

I would, too.

But the abject lack of curiosity by the media – both establishment and alternative – is, shall we say, somewhat stunning.

That’s not to say the public isn’t fascinated. In fact, the story is off the charts in terms of readership. More people read the story and viewed the images and analysis in the first few hours of its release than watch CNN in the same time period.

Yet it is another of those stories about which we cannot speak – at least insofar as the self-appointed information cops have determined.

Obama signing legislation (White House photo)

What are the implications of this story?

Barack Obama has claimed to be a Christian. Of course, any Christian with real discernment understood what that claim was all about – political realities. No real Christian, however, would ever wear a ring inscribed with the Shahada, which Obama has publicly said, when recited, which he can do in perfect Arabic, is “the most beautiful sound in the world.”

How is it possible that no other press agency in the world – including those with intimate access to Obama – has ever bothered to look into this mystery ring or ask about it?

What does this inscription suggest about Obama’s embrace of and unusual affinity for the Islamic world – at the very moment it is at the center of global conflict?

How comfortable will Americans be with a president who wears a ring bearing such an inscription, even while claiming to be a Christian?

And, lastly, what is the special meaning behind this ring that has caused Obama to embrace it and wear it from his earliest days in college through his marriage to Michelle and four years of the presidency?

I don’t know about you, but I think this is an important story – maybe one of the biggest of the presidential election year. That it had to wait so long to be told reflects the inherent mystery still surrounding the man in the White House and a hapless press just too afraid to go certain places in the pursuit of the truth.

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